A young soldier, set loose in the real world Initial positivity clouding judgement,
like teargas
Ignorance, blinding like snow on a sunny day
Human interaction;
Like eyes,
a beautiful sight until
you zoom in
Every man for himself,
ignoring the cries of those affected
Isolation,
a savior from the chaos
Happiness becomes like a card trick,
the closer you look the
farther you get
Thoughts become a cancer, slowly corrupting your mind
Refuge becomes a prison,
trapping
you inside yourself
A young soldier,
consumed by his attempts to grapple with reality
Desperately pleading with lost dreams
A realization
Hidden by the dirt, finally uncovered
Peace lies beneath the stone
Creation of a generation
Generating anticipation
Alterations of duration's
While siting in frustration
Looks of men as children
Sticks and stones
Breaking bones
While throwing stones
Fires and teargas fill the air
Shots fired killing
One another
Do they not relize
We are all one yet separate
Adam and Eve were the start
Of me,
Tempted by Satan
The same rules apply today
Do not eat this apple of sin
Yet, my brothers and sisters
Are sill eating Eve's apple of sin
Some knew him,
Some knew him not,
We all knew him somehow;
Nobody knew what he had become,
What he had always been,
Digital platforms were closed
On towards evening
And in the next evening,
There was nothing but
Teargas from the sky;
It was time to go home,
That was the drone of the chopper;
So much about the democratic chameleon:
Some guys are sworn to wars without winning,
Others to winning without wars:
When a man shuts off a country
From themselves and the rest of the world,
That man has lost the war,
With or without winning.
Teargas from the sky,
Suddenly the air is toxic,
God sent the rains to clear it all off.
Life is a life
Driving home I nearly hit a rabbit
braked hard and the can of lager fell out of my hand.
We country folk drinks a lot; the police never stop you
unless you drive off the road and plough into a flock of sheep
then you are fined, and the police take the carcass home
dinner, for a big family.
So who am I sentimental over a rabbit when
there are chemical attacks on children in Syria,
and the war of attrition never ends
by courtesy of those who do not want peace there.
How am I sentimental when children are killed?
In Gaza children wounded by teargas have damages lungs
who am I to talk when witnessing the murder of a people?
That demands to be free of Israeli tyranny.
But deep in my heart if I were hungry enough, I would
have killed that rabbit taken it home and cooked it.
So what this makes me? A sentimental fool crying
over spilt life? Deaths for a higher political cause
like stealing land from the losers.
Teargas is bottled oxygen
The genius who invented it
should be sanctified as saint
for bringing new form of air
the ones who use it on duty
are heartless angels of happiness
they bring joy to those starved
sadists in this world can laugh
teargas is new bottled oxygen
that the powerful supply freely
the privileged poor get it by force
to stop them from complaining
Teargas, teargas your creator
must be adored while on knees
Red and blue lights in the night
A black and white drifting on rights
Empty hearts galvanized
Open palms weaponized
Hope flushing down the drain
Flooded by spits of acid rain
Voices rise in missiles and teargas
What is being said is anyone’s guess
Retaliating at the human wall
Eyes of coins raised fists must fall
Mothers screaming, ‘In mercy’s name’
A one-way street up in flames
A cold night in the light of darkness
Lanes hold hands as a symbol of oneness
Snipers take aim from atop the roof
But the soul is bulletproof..
Tomorrow where are you ?
I am a child of mzansi,
A child of a nation raised by a struggle of apartheid, as I emerge as a wound
Meant to glister, advertising the anguish of my fore fathers
Raised to cease all the nation’s bounty in their name,
As their pain can still be felt through the cracked township tar roads.
I am the promised future,
Born of tireless protests, teargas and blood
Blood washed clean of the judgments of my skin colour
And left to germinate on this waste land called poverty
As mothers fertilise this land one clean toilet at a time.
I am the repressed grievance of the people,
Who’s voice never transcended beyond the ballot paper
Trapped in a subliminal blackmail of before 1994
And feed grand promises of a better tomorrow
As two decades waste way I still ask “Tomorrow, where are you?”
These footsteps are a dotted line
A pulsating heartbeat on a timeline
Your curiosity fills in the blank spots
Guessing which stereotype‘s my blind spot
You can plot a healthy graph from my bounce
I own the future today ‘cos, “you only live once”
I believe in the streets, live on the beat
I was born ready so bring on the heat
My words are like sirens and teargas
They water eyes and numb earshot targets
The lovechild of Botha and Madiba in a steamer
My forefathers were visionaries so I’m just a dreamer
A polarized blend of explosive flavours
When love meets hate, call it jungle fever
Conscientised to awaken from this oppressive Matrix
As the sands of time cover my tracks, I uncover a soundtrack
His musings in paper and ink
have led him to the dungeons. Rusty
iron bars, smell of rats,
and cold wars surround him.
His people see through their leaders,
like water through the glass. Nothing
can stop them now- verses of freedom
have been burnt to ashes,
but not his words. They are deeply
engraved in every woman’s,
child’s and man’s heart.
They are at the prison gates,
breaking them. Bullets and teargas
canisters can’t stop them. They want
their leader- man of the people.
If he is freed, he will not only be a poet;
he will be a leader. A new journey
will begin in his life…..
For the chance to learn in plain English
Be afforded equal opportunity to accomplish
For a father to dream better for his son, how I wish
For a people to destroy another’s culture,
how selfish
When the world summarily defeated Nazi Germany
Blinded by a new world order to the suffering of so many
Post WWII, evil scientists still propagated falsification
Manipulated evolution to justify oppression?
Raised on air filled with teargas and gunshots
The land soaking with exploited labour’s sweat;
The tears of exasperation and the blood of molestation
We never lost our belief in Mandela’s religion
Generational poverty tightening its vicious circle
The enemy breeding an army of youth trained to kill
16 million sticks of dynamite liberated a nation
Literally paving the way for the ’94 Elections
**************************************************************
Born in the ‘80s, I was spared the torment of the birth of democratic South Africa.
But so many suffered unspeakable evils to make our freedom possible, on (Youth Day) 16 June, 1976.
One day,I stood on the mountain
Watching security forces using force to disperse demonstrators
Who had gathered in the commercial capital___
Blocked off traffic to a large part of the city:
To protest against their leaders' prolonged years in power.
His henchmen believe that he has kept his country,
On a relatively stable economic path:
But critics say at the expense of good governance.
He has won several elections and secured many terms in office___
Results that opposition parties denounce as fradulent.
Moreover it was a peaceful demostration.
But a large number of well-armed police,
Deployed by the oppressive regime :
Used water cannons, teargas,and other weapons,
To disperse and brutalise thousands of opposition supporters
And I saw several observers and journalists,
Attending the event being beaten by security personnel.
And they wounded many that assembled there,
They also,confiscated phones and digital cameras:
From anyone shooting images of the incident,
To make cover up of the worst military rule.
chipepo lwele
Dedicated to Muammar Gaddaffi,Ian Smith,Robert Mugabe and Bashar Al-Assad
I did'nt deserve to watch my mom break down over nerves
I did'nt deserve for nightly my dads sleep to be disturbed
I did'nt deserve for life to be the judge and jury's words
I did'nt deserve prison on this plate that I've been served
I never thought My kids would see me through this plated glass
I never thought my time would seep bye like a hourglass
I never thought I'd cry like I'd been hit with some teargas
I never thought I'd be the one the world would just bypass
I should have been forgiven but my innocense was shamed
I should have started running but I wasnt to be blamed
I should have saw it coming how could I be so defamed
I should have trusted no one but now I just sit here framed
I will not lose my sanity In the Lord I'll trust
I will not be a casualty to this I must adjust
I will not scorn humanity but for their air I lust
I will not let this tragedy give me a stone like crust.
Sha'ntez Jefferson
10/20/12
I was told who to fear
And believed every invasion
My chains have been broken
Released, the Raven flies to freedom
I've woken from my dream
Naked to all who seek justice
A mortal prognosis
Missing in the sewers of statehood
Brought to life by
Teargas in the streets
Celebrated by silver anemones
Luminescent of ginger blossoms
Gaslights reflect a feast
Forgotten before time began
Before
.........Time began
The lunchroom fart
of turbo pasta
scatters garlic teargas
laced with meaty mystery
without mercy to
flatten cubicles.
Chain-reactions
of Tupperware battles
erupt to devastate
once discerning pallets
until hobbled by stabs
of shrapnel to the gut,
prompting an exodus
of mournful bodies
propelled along that cloud
of processed misery
to wander, ashen-faced
along the concrete void.
All day I stared at the blank world
And could not tell
The words invisible in my hell
I waited for the sounds of emergency
The blinking eyes and flashing red
The petals crushed upon the ground
I waited in vain
Excoriated by pain
Carrying the debris in my brain
Of great structures of falsity
Crushing indescriminately the workers
Of Chrysler, GM and the hollow economy
Splintering their dreams
Into shards unjubilant
And I could not understand the world
Without smoke
The silence of the mighty Pele
The river a toxic brown not red
And this is May
So marginal to the memory
The horror that workers saw
When they begged justice for bread
What May is this
That does not cry everywhere
For workers and their leaders dead?
All day only my pen
Dared march the white edge of history
The fragrance of teargas
The fumes of petals crushed
Under the boots of my poetry.
All day they invented a virus
To scare the world inside
But I am a steel man
And bring no flowers to the deal.
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